From a western point of view, religion
and politics have been neatly and cleanly separated from one another since
the modern era (18th century). In this sense a clear distinction
is drawn here between the spread of Tantric Buddhism and the question of Tibet’s international legal status. However,
for an ancient culture like the Tibetan one, such a division is just not
possible. In it, all levels — the mystic, the mythic, the symbolic, and the
ritual — are addressed by every political event. From a Tibetan viewpoint
it is thus completely logical that the liberation of the Land of Snows from the claws of the Chinese dragon
be blown up into an exemplary deed that should benefit the whole planet.
“To save Tibet means to save the world!” is a
widespread slogan, even among committed Westerners.

Just like the teachings of the Buddha,
the political issue of Tibet at first evoked little resonance among
the western public. Those who broached the topic of the fate of the Tibetan
people in American and European governmental circles generally encountered
rejection and disinterest. But this dismissive stance changed in the
mid-eighties. With increasing frequency, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama was officially received by western heads of state who had previously
refused to be in public contact with him for fear of Chinese protests.

The “Tibet Lobby”

Since 1985 the so-called Tibet
lobby has been at work
in numerous countries. This is a cross-party collection of parliamentary
representatives who in their respective parliaments advocate a Tibet resolution that morally condemns China for its constant human rights abuses
and “cultural genocide”. A recognition of Tibet as an autonomous state is not linked
to such resolutions. At the Tibet
Support Groups Conference in Bonn (in 1996), Tim Nunn from England gave a paper on the methods (the upaya) of successful lobbying:
well-groomed appearance, diplomatic language, proper dress, skilled
presentation, and the like. Mr. Nunn was able to point to successes — 131
members of the British Lower House had engaged themselves for the cause of
the Land of Snows in London (Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, 1996, pp.
77ff.).

In the USA the lawyer Michael van Walt van Praag
has successfully argued the interests of the Tibetan government in exile to
both Senators and Congressmen. He succeeded in getting a resolution on Tibet passed in the U.S. Senate. One of his
greatest political successes was when in 1991 the Kundun was permitted to take his place in the rotunda and
address the American House of Congress. Afterwards he met with President
George Bush. Bush signed an official document in which Tibet was described as am “occupied
country”. Since 1990 The Voice of
America has begun broadcasting programs in Tibetan. A new broadcaster, Free Asia, which also has a Tibet department, has recently been approved
by Congress. As of 1997, the State
Department appointed a “special representative for Tibet” who is supposed to have the task of
negotiating between the Kundun
and China.

In early September 1995, the Dalai Lama
smilingly embraced Senator Jesse Helms, renowned for his ultra-conservative
stance. This was a high point in the thoroughgoing reverence the
Republicans have shown him.

The Democrats barely acknowledged such
conservative solidarity, since it was they who smoothed the way for the
“liberal” god-king to reach a broad public. The American President, Bill
Clinton, and his Vice-president, Al Gore, were initially reserved and
ambivalent towards the Dalai Lama, whom they have met several times. The
American government’s position is expressed unambiguously in a statement
from 1994: „Because we do not recognize Tibet as an independent state, the
United States does not conduct diplomatic relations with the self-styled
the ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’“ it says there (Goldstein, 1997, p. 121).

But after several meetings with
President Clinton and his wife Hillary the god-king was able to make a
lasting impression on the presidential couple. Clinton committed himself as never before to
resolving the question of Tibet. One of the major points of his trip
to China (in 1998) was to encourage Jiang Zemin to take up
contact with the Dalai Lama. Every western head of state who visits the
Middle Kingdom now reiterates this, which has led to success: in the
meantime the two parties (Beijing and Dharamsala) confer constantly
behind closed doors.

In 1989 the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was
awarded the Nobel peace prize. The fact that he received this high accolade
has less to do with the political situation in Tibet than, above all, the bloody events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where numerous Chinese students
protesting against the regime lost their lives. The West wanted to morally
condemn China and the Tibet lobby was successful in proposing an
honoring of His Holiness as the best means of doing so.

From now on the god-king possessed an
international prominence like never before. The Oslo award could almost be said to have
granted him a passport and access to the majority of world heads of state.
There was hardly a president who still in the face of Chinese protests
refused to officially receive the god-king, at least as a religious
representative. In Ireland, France, Liechtenstein, Austria, Lithuania,
Latvia, Bulgaria, Russia, the USA, Canada, England, Switzerland, Germany,
Sweden, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Gabun, Australia, New Zealand, several South
American countries — everywhere the “modest monk” was honored like a
pontiff.

In 1996 the lobbyists succeeded in
maneuvering Germany into a spectacular confrontation with China through the passing of a resolution Tibet in the Bundestag (the German lower house). The resolution was
supported by all parties in parliament, be they green, left, liberal, or
conservative. The paradoxical side to this move was that both the Dalai
Lama and the Chinese were able to profit from it whilst the naïve Germans
had to pay up. This coup represents the Kundun’s
party’s greatest political success in the West to date. On the other hand,
the Chinese succeeded in inducing the intimidated German federal government
into continuing to grant China the much desired Hermes securities
formerly refused them. For Beijing, with this agreement in hand, the
question of Tibet in its relations with Germany was resolved for now. Even if we
cannot speak of a direct cooperation here, according to the cui bonum principle the two Asian
parties profited greatly by drawing an essentially uninvolved nation into
the conflict.

The media management of the Kundun’s followers is by now
perfect. Numerous offices in all countries, above all the Tibet Information Network (TIN) in London, supply the press with material about
the serious shortcomings in the Land of Snows, life in the community of Tibetan
exiles, and the activities of the god-king. There is successful cooperation
with Chinese dissidents. Reports from Beijing, which admittedly can only be treated
with great caution but nonetheless include much important information, are
uniformly dismissed by Dharamsala as communist propaganda. This
one-sidedness in the assessment of Tibetan affairs has in the meantime also
been adopted by the western press corps.

For example, when at the invitation of
the Chinese the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, visited Lhasa as the first
western head of government and afterwards announced that the situation in
the Tibet capital was by no means so criminal as it was portrayed to be by
the Dalai Lama’s office, he was lambasted in the media, who declared that
he was prepared to sell his morals for financial considerations. But when
he was there, the former American President Jimmy Carter, renowned for his
great commitment to human rights, also gained the same impression
(Grunfeld, 1996, p. 232).

The issue of Tibet has become an important means of
anchoring Tantric Buddhism in the West. As a political issue it appears in the West to be completely
divorced from any religious instrumentalization. The Kundun appears in public as a campaigner for peace, a democrat,
a humanist, as an advocate of the oppressed. This skillfully adapted
western/ethical “mixture” gains him unrestricted access to the highest
levels of government. Although some politicians may see a confirmation of
their ideals in the (ostensible) behavior of the Dalai Lama, fundamentally
it is probably power-political motives which determine Western policy on Asia. The West’s relationship with China is namely extremely ambivalent. On the
one hand there is a hope for good economic and political ties to the
prospering country with its unbounded markets, on the other a deep-seated
fear of a future Chinese superpower. The political situation in Tibet and the circumstances of the Tibetans
in exile afford sufficient grounds to be employed as an argument against a
potential Chinese imperialism.

The “Greens”

In Germany the issue of Tibet was first taken up by green politicians, primarily by the
parliamentary representatives Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian. Their
pro-Tibetan intervention is still marked by a continuing success. “Major
entertainers and environmentalists”, wrote the Spiegel magazine, “have found a common denominator in their
commitment to the kingdom on the roof of the world. Hollywood meets Robin
Hood — Tibet’s Buddhism is the common denominator”
(Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 109). Petra
Kelly’s selfless engagement was later interpreted as a form of “engaged Buddhism”
whose principle concerns were said to include the defense of human rights,
ecological responsibility, and sexual equality. [1]
The Kundun cleverly co-opted all
these western demands and suddenly (at the end of the eighties) appeared on
the political stage as a spearhead of the global ecological movement.

„Green
politics” and environmental issues have in the meantime attained a central
place within the political propaganda of the Tibetans in exile. There are
hundreds of conferences such as the one introduced by His Holiness in 1993
under the title of „Ecological responsibility: A dialog with Buddhism”. The
Kundun is a member of the
ecologically oriented Goal Forum of
Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival. In 1992 he
visited the Greenpeace flagship,
the Rainbow Warrior. And at the
„global forum” in Rio de Janeiro the Dalai Lama
had far-reaching things to say about the earth’s problems: „This blue
planet of ours is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life; its future
our future. Indeed, the earth acts like a mother to all. Like children, we
are dependent on them. ... Our Mother Earth is teaching us a lesson in
universal responsibility”, the god-king announced emotionally. (www.tibet.com/Eco/dleco4.html)

Since the late eighties it has become
normal at international environmental meetings all around the world to
describe the Tibet of old as an ecological paradise, where wild gazelles
and “snow lions” eat from the monks’ hands, as the Dalai Lama’s brother
(Thubten Jigme Norbu) put it at a Tibet conference in Bonn (in 1996). For
thousands of years, it says in edifying writings, the Tibetans have revered
plants and animals as their equals. “Historical” idylls such as the
following are taken literally by innocently trusting Westerners: „The Tibetan
traditional heritage, which is known to be over three thousand years
old[!], can be distinguished as one of [the] foremost traditions of the
world in which … humankind and its natural environment have persistently
remained in perfect harmony” (Huber, 2001, p. 360).

What glowed in the past should also
shine in the future. Accordingly many western followers of the Kundun imagine how the once
flourishing garden will bloom again after his return to the Land of Snows. His Holiness is also generously
accommodating towards this image of desire and promises to found the first
ecological state on earth in a “liberated” Tibet — for many “Greens” a
glimmer of hope in a world that constantly neglects its environmental
responsibilities.

Today, among many committed members of
the international “ecological scene”, being green, environmentally
friendly, nature-loving, vegetarian, and Tibetan Buddhist, are all but
identical. But is there any truth in such an equivalence? Was the Tibet of old really an “earthly garden of
paradise”? Is the essence of Tantric Buddhism pro-nature and animal-loving?

Tibetan Buddhism’s
hostility towards nature

No complicated research is required to
establish that the inhabitants of the Tibet of old, like all highlands
peoples, had an ambivalent relationship with nature, in which fear and
horror in the face of constant catastrophes (turns in the weather, cold,
famines, accidents, illnesses) predominated. Nature, which was (and often
still is) in fact experienced animistically
as being inhabited by spirits, was only rarely a friend and partner;
instead, most of the time it was a malevolent and destructive force, in
many instances a terrifying demoness. We have presented some of these
anti-human nature spirits in our chapter on Anarchy and Buddhism. Using violence, trickery, and magic they
have to be compelled, tamed, and not unrarely killed.

In a comprehensive study (Civilized Shamans), the Tibet
researcher Geoffrey Samuel has demonstrated that the violent subjugation of
a wild nature is a drama constantly repeated within the Tibetan monastic
civilization: beginning with the nailing down of the Tibetan primeval earth
mother, Srinmo, by King Songtsen Gampo so as to erect the
central shrines of the Land of Snows over her wounds, the construction of
every Lamaist temple (no matter where in the world) was and is prefaced by
a ritual that refreshes the dreadful stigmatization of the “earth mother”. Srinmo is undoubtedly the (Tibetan)
emanation of “Mother Earth” or “Mother Nature” whom the Dalai Lama so
emotionally pleads to rescue at international ecology congresses ("the
earth acts like a mother to all”). It was the Kundun himself — if we take his doctrine of incarnation
literally — who in the form of Songtsen
Gampo many centuries ago nailed down “Mother Earth” (Srinmo). He himself laid the bloody
foundations (the maltreated body of Srinmo)
upon which his clerical and andocentric system rests. It is he himself who
repeats this aggressive “taming act” at every public performance of the Kalachakra ritual: before a sand
mandala is created, the local nature spirits (some interpreters say the
earth mother Srinmo) are nailed
to the ground with phurbas
(ritual daggers).

The equation of nature with the
feminine principle is an archetypical move that we find in most cultures.
The Greek Gaia and Tibetan Srinmo are just two different names
for the same divine substance of the earth mother. In European alchemy,
nature is the starting point (the prima
materia) for the magic experiments and likewise a principium feminile. We have examined the close interconnection
of alchemy and Tantrism in detail and proved that in both systems the
feminine principle is sacrificed for the benefit of a masculine
experimenter. By adopting for ourselves the tantric way of seeing things in
which everything is linked to everything else, we were able to recognize
the nailing down of Srinmo (the
symbol-laden primal event of Tibetan history) as the historical predecessor
of the “tantric/alchemic female sacrifice”. Songtsen Gampo sacrificed the “earth mother” so as to acquire
her energies for himself, just as every tantra master sacrifices his karma mudra so as to absorb her gynergy.

In recent decades numerous books have
appeared that address the disrespect, enslavement, and dismemberment of
nature by the modern scientific world view and technology. Many of the
analyses, especially when they are the work of feminist authors, indicate
that the destruction and control of nature are to be equated with the
superiority of the masculine principle over the feminine, of the god over
the goddess, in brief with the supremacy of patriarchy. This critical view
of the history of oppression and exploitation of the scientific age has
largely obscured the view of atavistic religions’ hostility towards nature,
especially when these come from the east, like Tibetan Buddhism.

But Buddhist Tantrism, we would like to
unreservedly claim, is hostile to nature and therefore ecologically hostile
in principle, because it destroys
the natural, sensual, and feminine sphere so as to render it useful for the
masculine. Further, in the performance of his enlightenment rituals, every
tantra master burns up all the natural
components of his own human body and, parallel to this (on a macrocosmic
level), the entire natural
universe. From a traditional viewpoint nature consists of a checkered
mixture of the different elements (fire, water, earth, air, ether). In
Tantrism, however, fire destroys the other elementary constituents. In the
final instance it is the “fiery” SPIRIT which subjugates everything else,
but NATURE in particular. Let us recall that Avalokiteshvara, the incarnation father of the Dalai Lama, acts
as the “Lord of Fire” and the Bodhisattva of our age.

Nor were the centers of civilization in
former Tibet at all environmentally friendly. The Lhasa of tradition, for instance, capital of
the Lamaist world, could hardly be described as an exemplary ecological
site but rather, as a number of world travelers have reported, was until
the mid-twentieth century one of the dirtiest cities on the planet. As a
rule, refuse was tipped unto the street. The houses had no toilets.
Everywhere, wherever they were, the inhabitants unburdened themselves. Dead
animals were left to rot in public places. For such reasons the stench was
so penetrating and nauseating that the XIII Dalai Lama felt sick every time
he had to traverse the city. Nobles who stepped out usually held a
handkerchief over their nose.

It is even more absurd to describe the
Tibetan monastic society as a vegetarian culture. The production and
consumption of meat have always been counted among the most important
branches of the country’s economy (not least because of the climatic conditions).
It is indeed true that a devout Tibetan may not kill an animal himself, but
he is not forbidden from eating it. Hence the slaughter is performed by
those of other faiths, primarily Moslems. The Kundun is also a keen meat eater, albeit, if one is to believe
him, not out of enthusiasm but rather for health reasons. Anyone who is
also aware of the great contempt Buddhism in general shows for being reborn
as an animal can only wonder at such eco-paradisiacal-vegetarian
retrospection now on offer in the “scholarly history” of the exiled
Tibetans.

But by now the Tibetans in exile
themselves gladly believe in such ecological fairytales. For them it is
alone the brutal Chinese (whose behavior towards Mother Earth is no better
nor worse than any other capitalist country, however) who are the villains
and stand accused (in this instance rightly) of destroying the ancient
forests of the country and because they pay high prices for aphrodisiacs
won from the bones of the snow leopard. But there are also some factual
objectors to the opinion that the Tibet of old was an eco-paradise. The
Tibetans were never more ecologically aware than other peoples, writes
Jamyan Norbu, co-director of the Tibetan Culture Institute in Dharamsala,
and warns against dangerous myth making (Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 119).

Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian

In this section, which we introduced
with the two German “Greens”, Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian, we would like
to draw attention to some interesting speculations in the Buddhist scene concerning
the reunification of Germany. The Dalai Lama rarely becomes directly and
openly involved in world politics aside from the issue of Tibet unless calling for peace in general.
There are nevertheless numerous occult rumors in circulation among his followers
that suggest him to be the political director of the world who holds the
strings from “another dimension” in his hands. For example, there has been
talk that the fall of the Berlin Wall was to be attributed to him. Among
other things, the fact that at the exact point where the first break in the
wall was created (a scene broadcast all around the world) there stood a
graffiti reading Long Live Dalai Lama
is offered as proof of this.

In fact, six months before the German
reunification the Kundun had
stood praying before the “wall of shame” with a candle in his hand. The
pacifist, opponent of atomic energy, environmentalist and committed
campaigner for the freedom of Tibet, Petra Kelly, had been able to
motivate him to cross the East German border together with his entire
retinue in December 1989. After the candle ceremony mentioned, the group
were ferried to a Round Table
discussion with citizens’ rights groups by the GDR state security service
(the infamous Stasi, or secret
police). [2]

The first break in the “fall of the wall”
of Berlin.

See the graffiti “Long live Dalai [Lama]”

Petra Kelly later described the
situation as a political vacuum in which the democratic opposition
presented the vision of transforming the former GDR into a non-aligned
state without a military or nuclear weapons that would align itself with
neither capitalist nor communist ideas. The Dalai Lama was assured that he
would be the first guest of this new state and that Tibet’s autonomy would be recognized as the
first act of foreign affairs. The German participants in this conversation
regarded themselves as a kind of provisional government. All were said to
have been deeply moved by the presence of His Holiness. “Only six months
later, on 22 June 1990", writes Stephen Batchelor, “his prayer was
answered when Checkpoint Charlie was 'solemnly dismounted'"
(Batchelor, 1994, p. 378).

The Dalai Lama as a political magician
who brought down the Berlin Wall with his prayers? Such conceptions lay the
foundations for a “metapolitics” in which international events are
influenced by symbolic actions. Petra Kelly probably thought along these
lines; her extraordinary devotion to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause
is otherwise hard to comprehend.

The pacifist was certainly uninformed
about the Kalachakra Tantra’s
aggressive/warlike core, the androcentric sexual magic of Tibetan Buddhism,
and the dark chapters in the Tibetan and Mongolian history. Like thousands
of others, she followed His Holiness’s charm and messages of peace and was
blind to the gods of the Vajrayana’s
obsessions with power at work through him. As she and her de facto, Gert
Bastian, visited Dharamsala in 1988, they were both, despite having an
eagle eye for every minor infringement of democracy in the German Federal Republic,
“enormously impressed by the extremely democratic discussions” that had
taken place in the parliament of the Tibetans in exile. This was a total
misassessment of the situation — as we have already shown at length and as
anyone who has the smallest insight into the inner political affairs of
Tibetans in exile knows, their popular representation is a farce (Tibetan Review, January 1989, p.
15). But not for Petra Kelly — following her visit to Dharamsala she was so
completely entranced by the Kundun’s
charm and humane political mask that the issue of Tibet became for her the
quintessential “moral touchstone of international politics” (Tibetan Review, July 1993, p. 19).
In concrete terms, that meant the politicians our world stood at a
threshold: if they supported the Dalai Lama they would be following the
path of morality and virtue; if they turned against the Kundun or simply remained passive,
then they would be steering down the road to immorality!

The green politician Petra Kelly
completely failed to perceive the religiously motivated power politics and
the tantric occultism of Dharamsala. Like many other women she became a
female chess piece (a queen) in the Kundun’s
game of strategy, one who opened doors to the German parliament and the
upper political ranks for him.

The illusory world of interreligious dialog and the ecumenical
movement

Although dominated by culturally fixed
images and rituals like every other religion, Tibetan Buddhism initially
presents itself as a tradition that is tied to neither a culture, a
society, nor a race. We hear from every lama that the teachings of the
Shakyamuni Buddha consist exclusively in the experiences of each
individual. Anybody can test their credibility in his or her own religious
practices. Being of another non-Buddhist confession is no obstacle to such
sacred exercises.

This, in the light of the tantric
ritual system and the “baroque” Tibetan pantheon feigned, purist and
liberal basic attitude allows His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to
present himself as being so tolerant and open minded that he has been
celebrated for years as the “most open minded and liberal ecclesiastical
dignitary” on the planet. His readiness to engage in dialog has all but
become a catchphrase.

In now presenting the Kundun’s interreligious activities,
we always have clearly in mind an awareness that at heart the entire
Lamaist system is and wants to be incompatible with other faiths. Let us
review the reasons for this once more, summarized in seven points. Tantric
Buddhism, especially the Kalachakra
Tantra and the associated Shambhala
myth, includes:

The extermination of those of other faiths

A warlike philosophy of violence

Foundations for a neofascist ideology

Contempt for the person, the individual (in favor of the gods),
and especially for women (in favor of the tantra masters)

The linking of religious and state power

World conquest and the establishment of a global Buddhocracy
via manipulative and warlike means

In the face of these points the Kundun’s ecumenical activity remains
a lie for as long as he continues to abide by the principles of the tantric
ritual system and the ideological/political fundamentals of the Shambhala myth (and the associated
grasp for the world throne). It is nonetheless of important tactical
significance for him and has proved to be an excellent means of spreading
the ideas of Lamaism all over the world without objection.

This indirect missionary method has a long tradition in Tibetan
history. As Padmasambhava (Guru
Rinpoche) won the Land of Snows over to Tantrism in the 8th
century, he never went on a direct offensive by openly preaching the
fundamentals of the dharma. As an
ingenious manipulator, he succeeded in employing the language, images,
symbols, and gods of the local religions as a means of transporting the
Indian Buddhism he had brought with him. The tribes to whom he preached
were convinced that the dharma
was nothing more than a clear interpretation of their old religious
conceptions. They did not even need to give up their deities (even if these
were most cruel) if they were to “convert” to tantric Buddhism, since
Padmasambhava integrated these into his own system.

Even the Kalachakra Tantra, based on a marked and pervasive concept of
the enemy, recommends the manipulation of those of other faiths.
Surprisingly, the “Time Tantra” permits the performance of non-Buddhist
rites by the tantra master. But there is an important condition here,
namely that the mystic physiology of the practicing yogi (his energy body)
with which he controls the entire occult/religious event remain stable and
keep strictly and without deviation to the tantric method (upaya). Then, it says in the time
doctrine, “no form of religion from the way of one’s own or a foreign
people is corrupting for the yogis” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra II, p. 177). With this permission, the way is free
for one to externally appear tolerant and open minded towards any religious
direction without conflicting with the power-political goals of the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala myth that want to elevate
Buddhism to be the sole world religion. In contrast, the feigned “religious
tolerance” becomes a powerful means of surreptitiously promoting one’s own
fundamentalism.

Where does this leave the ecumenical
politics of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama? Interreligious discussions are one
of the Kundun’s specialties;
there is not a major world ecumenical event of significance where his
negotiating presence is not evident. He is one of the presidents of the
“World’s Parliament of Religions” in Chicago. The god-king tirelessly spreads the
happy message that despite differing philosophies all religions have the
same motive, the perfection of humans. „Whatever the differences
between religions,” he explained in Madras in 1985, „all
of them want man to be good. Love and compassion form the essence of any
religion and these alone can bring people together and provide peace and
happiness to humanity” (Tibetan
Review, January 1985, p. 9).

Yet (he says) for the sake of quality
one should not gloss over the differences between the religious approaches.
It is not at all desirable that we end up with a uniform, overarching
religion; that can not be the goal of the dialog. One should guard against
a “religious cocktail”. The variety of religions is a outright necessity
for the evolution of humankind. “To form a new world religion,” the Kundun says, “would be difficult and
not particularly desirable. But since love is essential for all religions,
one could speak of a universal religion of love. Yet with regard to the
methods for developing love and for attaining salvation or permanent
liberation the religions differ from one another ... The fact that there
are so many different depictions of the way is enriching” (Brück and Lai,
1997, p. 520). In general, everyone should stick with the religion he or
she was born into.

For him it is a matter of deliberate
cooperation whilst maintaining autonomy, a dialog about the humanity common
to all. In 1997 the god-king proposed that groups of various religious
denominations undertake a pilgrimage to the holy places of the world
together in order to learn from one another. The religious leaders of the
world ought to come together more often, as “such a meeting is a powerful
message in the eyes of millions of people” (Tibetan Review, May 1997, p. 14).

Christianity

In the meantime, exchange programs
between Tibetan Buddhist and Christian orders of monks and nuns have become
institutionalized through a resolution of the Dalai Lama, with all four
major lines of tradition among the Tibetans (Nyingmapa, Sakyapa, Kagyupa,
and Gelugpa) participating. In the sixties, the American Trappist monk and
poet, Thomas Merton (1906-1968), visited the Kundun in Dharamsala and summarized his experience together as
follows: “I dealt primarily with Buddhists ... It is of incalculable value
to come into direct contact with people who have worked hard their whole
lives at training their minds and liberating themselves from passions and
illusions” (Brück and Lai, 1997, p. 49).

In 1989 the god-king and the
Benedictine abbot Thomas Keating led a gathering of several thousand
Christians and Buddhists in a joint meditation in the West. The Kundun has visited Lourdes and Jerusalem in order to pray there in silent
devotion. There is also very close contact between the LutheranChurch and the Council for Religious and Cultural Affairs of H.H. the Dalai Lama.
At the so-called Naropa Conferences
in Boulder, Colorado, topics such as “God” (Christian) and
“Emptiness” (Buddhist), “Prayer” (Christian) and “Meditation” (Buddhist),
“Theism” and “non-Theism”, the “Trinity” and the “Three Body Theory” are
treated in dialog between Christians and Buddhists.

The comparison between Christ and
Buddha has a long tradition (see Brück and Lai, 1997, pp. 314ff.). There
are in fact many parallels (the virgin birth for example, the messianism).
But in particular Mahayana
Buddhism’s requirement of compassion allows the two founding figures to
appear as representatives of the same spirit. Avalokiteshvara, the supreme Bodhisattva of compassion is thus
often presented as a quasi-Christian archetype in Buddhism and also prayed
to as such. This is naturally of great advantage to the Kundun, who is himself an
incarnation of Avalokiteshvara
and can via the comparison (of the two deities) lay claim to the powerful
qualities of Christ’s image.

But His Holiness is extremely cautious
and diplomatic in such matters. For a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama says, Christ
can of course be regarded as a Bodhisattva, yet one must avoid claiming
Christ for Buddhism. (Incidentally, Christ is named in the Kalachakra Tantra as one the
“heretics”.) The Kundun knows
only too well that an open integration of the archetype of Christ into his
tantric pantheon would only lead to strong protests from the Christian
side.

He must thus proceed with more skill if
he wants to nonetheless integrate the Nazarene into his system as
Padmasambhava once incorporated the local gods of Tibet. For example, he describes so many
parallels between Christ and Buddha (Avalokiteshvara)
that his (Christian!) audience arrive at the conclusion that Christ is a
Bodhisattva completely of their own accord.

Just how successful the Kundun is with such manipulation is demonstrated
by a conference held between a small circle of Christians and himself (in
1994), the proceedings of which are documented in the book, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective
on the Teachings of Jesus. In that the god-king repeatedly and emphatically
stressed at this meeting that he had not the slightest intention of letting
Buddhism monopolize anybody or anything, he in fact had the opposite
effect. The more tolerant and respectful towards other religions he showed
himself to be, the more he convinced his listeners that Buddhism was indeed
the one true faith. With this Catch 22, the Dalai Lama succeeded in
emerging at the end of this meeting as a Buddhist super monk, who in
himself combined all the qualities of the three most important Christian monastic
orders: „He [the Dalai Lama] brings three qualities to a spiritual
discourse,” the chief organizer of the small ecumenical event, a
Benedictine, says, „traits so rare in some contemporary Christian circles
as to have elicited grasps of relieved gratitude from the audience. These
qualities are gentleness, clarity, and laughter. If there is something Benedictine about him, there is a Franciscan side as well and a touch
of the Jesuit” (Dalai Lama XIV,
1997, pp. 16–17). The Kundun appeared to the predominantly
Catholic participants at this interreligious meeting to be more Christian
than the Christians in many points.

Richard
Gere: “Jesus is very much accepted by the Tibetans, even though they don’t
believe in an ultimate creator God. I was at a very moving event that His
Holiness did in England
where he lectured on Jesus at a Jesuit seminary. When he spoke the words of
Jesus, all of us there who had grown up Christians and had often heard them
before could not believe their power. It was...” Gere suddenly chokes with emotion.
For a few moments he just stares into the makeup mirror, waiting to regain
his compusere. “When someone can fill such words with the depth meaning
that they are intended to have, it’s like hearing them for the first time.”
(Schell, 2000, p. 57)

Although the Dalai Lama indignantly
rejects any monopolization of other religions by Buddhism, this is not at
all true of his followers. In recent times an ever-expanding esoteric
literature has emerged in which the authors “prove” that Buddhism is the
original source of all religions. In particular there are attempts to
portray Christianity as a variant of the “great vehicle” (Mahayana). Christ is proclaimed as a
Bodhisattva, an emanation of Avalokiteshvara
who sacrificed himself out of compassion for all living creatures (e.g.,
Gruber and Kersten, 1994).

From the Tibetan point of view, the
point of ecumenical meetings is not encounters between several religious
orientations. [3] That would contradict the
entire tantric ritual system. Rather, they are for the infiltration of
foreign religions with the goal (like Padmasambhava) of ultimately
incorporating them within its own system. On rare occasions the methods to be employed in such a
policy of appropriation are discussed, albeit most subtly. Two conferences
held in the USA in 1987 and 1992 addressed the central topic of whether the
Buddhist concept of upaya
("adroit means”) could provide the instrument “for more relaxed
dealings with the issue of truth in dialog (between Christians and
Buddhists)” (Brück and Lai, 1997, p. 281) “More relaxed dealings with the
issue of truth” — that can only mean that the cultic mystery of the sexual
magic rites, the warlike Shambhala
ideology, and the “criminal history” of Lamaism is either not mentioned at
all at such ecumenical meetings or is presented falsely.

An 800-page work by the two theologists
Michael von Brück and Whalen Lai (Buddhismus
und Christentum [Buddhism and Christianity]) is devoted to the topic of
the encounter between Buddhism and Christianity. In it there is no mention
at all of the utmost significance of Vajrayana
in the Buddhist scene, as if this school did not even exist. We can read
page after page of pious and unhurried Mahayana
statements by Tibetan lamas, but there is all but nothing said of their
secret tantric philosophy. The terms Shambhala
and Kalachakra Tantra are not to
be found in the index, although they form the basis for the policy on
religions of the Dalai Lama whom the authors praise at great length as the
real star of the ecumenical dialog. We can present this “theologically”
highbrow book as evidence of the subtle and covert manipulation through
which the “totalistic paradigm” of Tibetan Buddhism is to be anchored in
the west.

Only at one single incriminating point,
which we have already quoted earlier, do the two authors let the cat out of
the bag. In it they recommend that American intellectuals who feel
attracted to Chinese Hua-yen Buddhism should instead turn to the Kundun as the only figure in a
position to be able to establish a Buddhocracy: “Yet Hua-yen is no longer a
living tradition. ... That does not mean that a totalistic paradigm could not be repeated, but it seems
more sensible to seek this in the Tibetan-Buddhist
tradition, since the Tibetan Buddhists have a living memory of a real
'Buddhocracy' and a living Dalai Lama who leads the people as a religious and political head” (Brück and Lai,
1997, p. 631). The authors thus believe, despite pages of feigned
ecumenical Christianity, that a “totalistic paradigm” could be repeated in
the future and recommend the god-king from Dharamsala as an example. They
thus clearly and openly confirm the Buddhocratic vision of the Kalachakra Tantra and the Shambhala myth, of which they
themselves have not breathed a word.

The Kundun
even seems to have succeeded in gaining access to the “immune” Judaism.
After the Dalai Lama’s visit to Jerusalem (in 1996), groups were formed in
Israel and the USA in which Jewish and Buddhist ideas were supposed to be
brought together. A film has been made about the fate of the Israeli writer
Rodger Kamenetz, who converted to Buddhism after he had visited the Dalai
Lama in Dharamsala and then set about reinterpreting his own religious
roots in Buddhist terms. The so-called Bu-Jews
(Buddhist Jews) are the most recent product of the Kundun’s politics of tantric conquest. They are hardly likely
to be aware of the interlinkage between Tantric Buddhism and occult fascism
that we have described in detail.

Islam (The Mlecchas)

In contrast Islam is proving more
difficult for His Holiness than the Jews and Christians: “I can barely
recall having a serious theological discussion with Mohammedans”, he said
at the start of the eighties (Levenson, 1992, p. 288). This is only all to
readily understandable in light of the apocalyptic battle between the Mlecchas (followers of Mohammed) and
the Buddhist armies of the mythical general, Rudra Chakrin, prophesied in the Shambhala myth. A foretaste of this radical confrontation,
which according to the Kalachakra
prophecy awaits us in the year 2327, was to be detected as the Moslem
Taliban in Afghanistan declared in 1997 that they would destroy the
2000-year-old statues of Buddha in Bamyan because Islam prohibited human
icons. This could, however, be prevented under pressure from the world
public who reacted strongly to the announcement. (We would like to mention
in passing that the likenesses of Buddha carved into the cliffs of Bamyan,
of which one figure is 60 yards high, are to be found in a region from
which, in the opinion of reliable investigators like Helmut Hoffmann and
John Ronald Newman, the Kalachakra
Tantra originally comes.)

However, after being awarded the Nobel
peace prize, the Kundun in his
function as a world religious leader has revised his traditional
reservation towards Islam. He knows that it is far more publicity-friendly
if he also displays the greatest tolerance in this case. In 1998, he thus
encouraged Indian Muslims to play a leading role in the discourse between the
world religions. In the same, conciliatory frame of mind, in an interview
he earlier expressed the wish to visit Mecca one day (Dalai Lama XIV,
1996b, p. 152). [4]

On the other hand however, His Holiness
maintains very close contact with the Indian BJP (Bhatiya Janata Party) and the RSS (Rashtriya Svayam Sevak Sangh), two old-schoolconservative Hindu organizations
(currently — in 1998 — members of the governing coalition) who proceed with
all vigor against Islam. [5]

An honest renunciation of Tantric
Buddhism’s hostility toward Islam could only consist in the Kundun’s clear distantiation from
all the passages from the Kalachakra
tradition that concern this. To date, this has — as far as we know — never
happened.

In contrast, already today there are radical
developments in the Buddhist camp that are headed for a direct
confrontation with Islam. For example, the Western Buddhist “lama”, Ole
Nydhal (a Kagyupa), is strongly
and radically active in opposition to the immigration of Moslems to Europe.

As problematic as we perceive
fundamentalist Islam to be, we are nonetheless not convinced that the Kalachakra ideology and the final
battle with the Mlecchas
(Mohammedans) prognosticated by the tantra can solve the conflict at the
heart of the struggle between the cultures. A contribution to an
internet-based discussion rightly described the idea of a Shambhala warrior as the Buddhist
equivalent to the jihad, the
Moslem “holy war”. Religious wars, which have the goal of eliminating the
respective non-believers, have in fact, and for the West unexpectedly,
become a threat to world peace in recent years. We return to this point in
our conclusion, especially the question of whether the division of humanity
into two camps — Buddhist and Islam — as predicted in the Kalachakra Tantra is just a fiction
or whether it is a real danger.

Shamanism

Up until well into the eighties, the
encounter with nature religions played a significant role for the Dalai Lama. There was at that stage
a lot of literature that enthusiastically drew attention to the parallels
between the North American culture of the Hopi Indians and Tibetan
Buddhism. The same terminology was even discovered, just with the meanings
reversed: for example, the Tibetan word for “sun” was said to mean “moon”
in the language of the Hopi and vice versa, the Hopi sun corresponded to
the Tibetan moon (Keegan, 1981, unnumbered). There are also said to be
amazing correspondences among the rituals, especially the “fire
ceremonies”.

For a time the idea arose that the
Dalai Lama was the messiah announced in the Hopi religion. In the legend
this figure had been a member of the “sun clan” in the mythical past and
had left his Indian brothers so as to return in the future as a redeemer. “They
wanted to tell me about an old prophecy of their people passed on from
generation to generation,” His Holiness recounted, “in which one day
someone would come from the east. ... They thought it could be me and had
come to tell me this” (Levenson, 1992, p. 277).

In France in 1997 an unusual meeting
took place. The spiritual representatives of various native peoples
gathered there with the intention of founding a kind of international body
of the “United Traditions” and presenting a common “charta” to the public.
By this the attendees understood a global cooperation between shamanistic
religions, still practiced all over the world, with the aim of articulating
common rights and gaining an influence over the world’s conscience as the
“circle of elders”. The Dalai Lama was also invited to this congress,
organized by a Lamaist monastery in France (Karma Ling). Just how adroitly the organizers made him the
focal figure of the entire event, which was actually supposed to be a union
of equals, is shown by the subtitle of the book subsequently published
about the event, The United
Traditions: Shamans, Mecidine Men and Wise Women around the Dalai Lama.
The whole scenario did in fact revolve around the Dalai Lama. Siberian
shamans, North, South, and Central American medicine men (Apaches,
Cheyenne, Mohawks, Shuars from the Amazon, and Aztecs), African voodoo
priests (from Benin),Bon lamas, Australian Aborigines, and Japanese martial
artists came together for an opening ceremony at a Vajrayana temple,
surrounded “by the amazing beauty of the Tibetan décor” (Eersel and
Grosrey, 1998, p. 31). The meeting was suddenly interrupted by the cry,
“His Holiness, His Holiness!” — intended for the Dalai Lama who was
approaching the meeting place. The shamans stood up and went towards him.
From this point on he was the absolute center of events. There were
admittedly mild distantiations before this, but only the Bon priests dared
to be openly critical. Their representative, Lopön Trinley Nyima Rinpoche,
strongly attacked Lamaism as a repressive religion that has persecuted the
Bon followers for centuries. In answer to a question about his attitude to
Tibetan Buddhism he replied, “Seen historically, a merciless war has in
fact long been conducted between us two. … Between the 7th and the 20th
century a good four fifths of Tibet was Buddhist. Sometimes this also meant
violence: hence, in the 18th century, with the help of the Chinese, the
Gelugpa carried out mass conversions in the border regions of Tibet which
had long been inhabited by the Bon” (quoted by Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p.
141). Still today, the Bonpos are disadvantaged in many ways: “You should
be aware, for instance, that non-Buddhist children do not see a penny of
the money donated by international aid organizations for Tibetan children!”
Nyima Rinpoche protested (quoted by Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p. 132).

But the Kundun knows how to deal with
such matters. The next day he lets the Bon critic sit beside him, and
declares the Bonpos to be “Tibet’s fifth school”. In his pride, Nyima
Rinpoche forgot about any criticism or the history of the repression of his
religion. The Dalai Lama takes the African voodoo representative, Daagpo
Hounon Houna, in his arms and has a photo taken. The two book authors
comment that, “Back home in Africa this picture will certainly receive
great symbolic status” (Eersel and Grosley, 1998, p. 132). Then the Kundun
says some moving words about “Mother Earth” he has learned from the New Age
milieu and which as such do not exist in the Tibetan tradition: “These days
we have too little contact to Mother Earth and in this we forget that we
ourselves are a part of nature. We are cildren of nature, Mother Earth, and
this planet is our only home” (quoted by Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p. 180).
Let us recall that before the start of every Kalachakra ritual the earth spirits are nailed down with a
ritual dagger. The Dalai Lama goes on to preach about the variety of races
and the equality of the religions of the world. And he has already won the
hearts of all. It is naturally his congress,
he is the axis around which the “circle of elders” revolves.

Roughly in the middle of the book we
suddenly learn that the delegates were invited in his nameand that “without the support and the
exceptional aura of His Holiness” nothing would have been possible (Eersel
and Grosrey, 1998, p. 253). Even the high priest from Benin, who smuggled
the remains of an animal sacrifice into the ritual temple that was,
however, discovered and removed, accepts the Tibetan hierarch as the
central figure of the meeting, saying “I therefore greet His Holiness the
Dalai Lama around whom we have gathered here” (Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p.
199). One of the organizers(Jean-Claude Carrière) sums things up: “That was
actually the motor of this meeting. Here for the first time peoples, some
of whom have almost vanished from the face of the earth, were asked to
speak (and act) and they have recognized the likewise degraded, disowned,
and exiled Dalai Lama as one of their own. It is barely imaginable how
important it was for them to be able to bow before him and present him with
a gift” (Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p. 254). Tibetan Buddhism is becoming a
catch-all for all religions: “If the meeting of the United Traditions took
place in a Buddhist monastery, it is surely because the spirit of the Way
of Buddha, as embodied by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, encourages such
meetings. His presence alongside the elders and the role of unifier which
was accorded him on the Day of the United Traditions, is in the same
category as the suggestions that he made in front of the assembled
Christians in 1994 …” (Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p. 406). Thus Lamaism
plays the tune to which those attending dance: “A more astonishing vision,
in which we here, borne along by the songs and drums of the Tibetans, begin
to ‘rotate’ along with the Asian shamans, African high priests, American
and Australian men and women of knowledge” (Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p.
176).

This meeting made two things apparent:
firstly, that the traditions of the native peoples are fundamentally
uninterested in a process of criticism or self-criticism, and secondly,
that here too the Dalai Lama assumes spiritual leadership as a “king
shaman”. A line from the joint closing prayer typifies the androcentric
spirit of the “circle of elders”: “God our Father, we sacrifice and
dedicate to you our Mother the Earth” (Eersel and Grosrey, 1998, p. 413).
This says it all; even if a few women participate the council of elders
remains a “circle of patriarchs”, and the female sacrifice which we have
identified as the central mystery of Tantric Buddhism also essentially
determines the traditional systems of ritual of the shamans gathered in
France.

The occult scene and the
New Age

What then is the relationship like
between the Dalai Lama and the so-called esoteric scene, which has spread
like a bomb all over the Westin
recent years? In relations with various traditional occult sects (the
Moonies, Brahmakumaris, Scientologists, Theosophists, Roerich groups) who
in general do not enjoy a good name in the official press His Holiness is
often more tolerant and intimate than the broad public realizes. We have
already reported extensively about his connection to Shoko Asahara’s AUM
sect. He also maintains lively contact with Theosophists of the most
diverse schools. A few years ago His Holiness praised and introduced a
collection of Madame Blavatsky’s writings with a foreword.

But it is his relationship with the
religious subculture that became known worldwide as the New Age Movement which is of
decisive significance. Already at the start of the seventies the youth
protest movement of 1968 was replaced by the spiritual practices of
individuals and groups, the left-wing political utopia of a classless
society by a vision of the “community of the holy”. All the followers of
the New Age saw themselves as
members of a “soft conspiracy” that was to prepare for the “New Age of
Aquarius” and the appearance of messianic saviors (often from non-European
cultures). Every conceivable school of belief, politico-religious viewpoint
and surreal fantasy was gathered up in this dynamic and creative cultural
current. At the outset the New Age
movement displayed a naive but impressive independence of the existing
religious traditions. It was believed one could select the best from all cultic mysteries —
those of the Indians and American Indians, the Tibetans, Sufis, the
Theosophists, etc. — in order to nonchalantly combine it with one’s own
spiritual experiences and further develop it in the sense of a spiritual
and peaceful global community. Even traditionally based gurus from the
early phase like Rajneesh Baghwan from India or the Tibetan, Chögyam
Trungpa, were able to accept this “spiritual liberalism” and combined their
hallowed initiation techniques with all manner of methods drawn from the
modern western tradition, especially with those of therapeutic psychology.
But after only a few years of creative freedom, the orthodox ecclesiastical
orientations and atavistic sects who put this “mystic-original potential”
to use for their own ends, indeed vitally needed it for their own
regeneration, prevailed in the New
Age movement.

Buddhism was intensively involved in
this process (the incorporation of the New
Age) from the outset. At first the influence of Japanese Zen
predominated, however, two decades later Tibetan Lamaism succeeded in
winning over ever more New Age
protagonists. The fact that since the 19th century Tibet has
been the object of western fantasies, onto which all conceivable occult
desires and mystic hopes have been projected, certainly helped here. The
Theosophic vision of omnipotent Mahatmas
who steer the fate of the world from the heights of the Himalayas has
developed into a powerful image for non-theosophical religious subcultures
as well.

For the Fourteenth Dalai Lama the New Age Movement was both the
primary recruiting field for western Buddhists and the gateway to
mainstream society. The double character of his religion, this mixture of
Buddhocratic officialese and the anarchistic drop-out that we have depicted
earlier, was of great advantage to him in his skilled conquest of the
spiritual subculture. Then the “children of the Age of Aquarius”, who
conceived of themselves as rebels against the existing social norms (their
anarchic side) and were not infrequently held up to ridicule by the
bourgeois public, also on the other hand battled fiercely for social
recognition and the assertion of their ideas as culturally acknowledged
values. A visit by the Dalai Lama lent their events considerable official
status, which they would not otherwise have had. They invested much money
and effort to achieve this. Since the Dalai Lama was only very rarely
received by state institutions before the late eighties but nonetheless saw
extended travels as his political duty, the material resources of the New
Age scene likewise played an important role for him. “He opens Buddhist
centers for New Age nouveau riche protagonists”,
wrote the Spiegel, “whose
respectability he cannot always be convinced about” (Spiegel 16/1998, p. 111). Up until the mid eighties, it was
small esoteric groups who invited him to visit various western countries
and who paid the bills for his expenses afterwards — not the ministers and
heads of state in Bonn, Madrid, Paris, Washington, London, and Vienna.

Such an arrangement suited the
governments well, since they did not have to risk falling out with China by
committing themselves to a visit by the Dalai Lama. On the other hand, the
exotic/magic aura of the Kundun, the
“living Buddha” and “god-king”, has always exercised a strong attraction
over Society. Hardly anyone who had a name or status (whether in business,
politics, the arts, or as nobility) could resist this charming and “human”
arch-god. To be able to shake the hand of the “yellow pontiff” and
“spiritual ruler from the roof of the world” and maybe even chat casually
with him has always been a unique social experience. Thus, on these
somewhat marginalized New Age
trips, time and again “secret” meetings took place “on the side “ with the
most varied heads of state and also very famous artists (Herbert von
Karajan for example), who let themselves be enchanted by the smile and the
exoticism of the Kundun.
Countless such unofficial meetings laid the groundwork for the Kundun’s Great Leap into the
official political sphere, which he finally achieved at the end of the
eighties with the Tibet Lobby and
the award of the Nobel peace prize (1989).

Since then, it has been the heads of
state, the famous stars, the higher ranks of the nobility, the rectors of
the major universities, who receive the Tibetan Kalachakra master with much pomp and circumstance. The
intriguing, original but naive New
Age Movement no longer exists. It was rubbed out between the various
religious traditions (especially Buddhism) on one side and the “bourgeois”
press (the so-called “critical public”) on the other. For all the problems
this spiritual heir and successor to the movements of 1968 had, it also
possessed numerous ideas and life practices which were adequate for a
spiritually based culture beyond that of the extant religious traditions.
But the bourgeois society (from
which the “Children of the Age of Aquarius came) had neither recognized nor
acted upon this potential. In contrast, the traditional religions, but
especially Buddhism, reacted to the New
Age scene with great sensitivity. They had experienced the most
dangerous crisis in their decline in the sixties and they needed the
visions, the commitment, and the fresh blood of a young and dynamic
generation in order to survive at all. Today the New Age is passé and the Kundun
can distance himself ever further from his old friends and move over into
the establishment completely.

In the following chapter we shall show
just how decisive a role the Kundun
played in the conservative process of resorption (of the New Age). He succeeded, in fact, in
binding the intellectual and scientific elite of the New Age Movement to his own atavistic system. These were both
young and elder western scientists trained in the classic disciplines
(nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, neurobiology) who endeavored to
combine their groundings in the natural sciences with religious and
philosophical presentations of the subject, whereby the Eastern-influenced
doctrines became increasingly important. This international circle of bold
thinkers and researchers, who include such well-known individuals as Carl
Friedrich von Weizsäcker, David Bohm, Francisco Varela, and Fritjof Capra,
is our next topic. A further section of the New Age scene now serve as his dogsbodies through their
commitment to the issue of Tibet, and are spiritual rewarded from time to
time with visits from lamas and retreats.

In 1939 in a commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the great
psychologist Carl Gustav Jung wrote to the effect that to practice yoga on
the 5th Avenue or anywhere else that could be reached by telephone would be
a spiritual joke. Jung was convinced that the ancient yoga practices of
Tibetan Tantrism was incompatible with the modern, scientifically and
technologically determined, western world view. For him, the combination of
a telephone and Tibet presented a paradox. “The telephone! Was there no
place on earth where one could be protected from the curse”, a west
European weary of civilization asks in another text, and promptly decides
to journey to Tibet, the Holy Land, in which one can still not be reached
by phone (Riencourt, 1951, pp. 49-50). Yet such yearning western images of
an untouched Tibet are deceptive. Just one year after Jung’s statement (in
1940) the Potala had its own telephone line.

But there were also other voices in the
thirties! Voices that dared to make bold comparisons between modern
technical possibilities and the magic powers (siddhis) of Tantrism: Evans-Wentz, for example, the famous
translator of the Tibetan Book of the
Dead, enthuses about how “As from mighty broadcasting stations, the Great
Ones broadcast over the earth that Vital Spirituality which alone makes
human evolution possible” (Evans-Wentz, 1978, p. 18). These “Great Ones”
are the Maha Siddhas ("Grand
Sorcerers”) who are in hiding in the Himalayas (in Shambhala) and can with their magic reach out and manipulate
every human brain as they will.

In the last thirty years Tibetan
Buddhism has built up a successful connection to the modern western age.
From the side of the “atavistic” religion of Tibet there is no longer any
fear of contact with the science and technology of the West. All the
information technologies of the Occident are skillfully and abundantly
employed by Tibetan monks in exile and their western followers. There are
countless homepages preaching the dharma
(the Buddhist teaching) on the internet. The international jet set includes lamas who fly
around the globe visiting their spiritual centers all over the world.

But Tibetan Buddhism goes a step
further: the monastic clergy does not just take on the scientific/technical
achievements of the West, but attempts to render them epistemologically
dependent on its Buddhocratic/tantric world view. Even, as we shall soon
show, the Kundun is convinced
that the modern natural sciences can be “Buddhized”. This is much easier for
the Buddhists than the Moslems for example, who are currently pursuing a
similar strategy with western modernity. The doctrine of Mohammed is a
revelatory religion and has been codified in a holy book, the Koran. The Koran is considered the absolute word of God and forms the
immutable foundation of Islamic culture. It proves itself to be extremely
cumbersome when attempts are made to subsume the European scientific
disciplines within this revelatory text.

In contrast, Tibetan Buddhism (and also
the Kalachakra Tantra) is based
upon an abstract philosophy of “emptiness” which as the most general of
principlescan “include” everything, even western culture. “Everything arises out of shunyata (the emptiness)!” — with
this fundamental statement, which we still have to discuss, the Lamaist
philosophical elite gains access to the current paradigm discussion which has had European science holding its
breath since Heisenberg’s contribution to quantum theory. What does this
all mean?

„Paradigms gain their status,” Thomas Kuhn writes in his classic
work, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, „because they are more successful than their competitors
in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to
recognize as acute.” (Kuhn, 1962, p. 23). In his statement, Kuhn takes a scientific paradigm dispute (between
“theories”) as his starting point, but at the same time opens the door for articles of faith, since in his
investigation a paradigm does not need to explain all its assumptions. In very general terms, we can thus
understand the basic foundations of a human culture, be they of a
scientific or a religious nature, as a paradigm. The dogma as to whether it
is a god or a goddess who stands at the beginning of creation is thus just
as much a paradigm as René Descartes’ assumption of the separation of the
thinking mind (res cogitans) from
extended matter (res extensa), or
the principle of natural causation of Newtonian physics. Just like the
believers in the tantric Shambhala
myth, traditional Christians who accept the doctrinal status of the
Apocalypse of St. John interpret human history according to an eschatological, intentional
paradigm. In both systems, all historical events are directed towards a
final goal, namely the coming of a messiah (Christ or Rudra Chakrin)
and the staging of a final battle between believers and unbelievers. The
future of humanity is thus fixed for all time. In contrast, western
historicism sees history purely as the interplay of various causes that
together produce an open-ended, undecided future. It thus follows a causal paradigm. A democracy holds
the principle of the freedom and equality of all people as its guiding
paradigm, whereas a theocracy or Buddhocracy recognize the omnipotence of a
god or, respectively, Buddha as the highest principle of their system of
governance.

New paradigms first come to the fore in
a society’s cultural awareness when the old dominant paradigmatic
fundamentals come into crisis. The western world is currently being shaken
by such a paradigmatic crisis. According to contemporary critics, the
scientific “Age of Reason” in alignment with the ideas of René Descartes
and Isaac Newton is no longer able to cope with the multiplex demands of a
postmodern society. Neither is the mechanistic world view with the causal
principle of classical physics sufficient to apprehend the complexity of
the universe, nor does western “rationalism” help meaningfully organize human and natural life. “Reason” for
instance, as the undisputed higher principle reigned over the emotions,
intuition, vision, religiousness, erotic love, indeed even over humanism.
The result has been a fundamental crisis of meaning and epistemology.
Citing Oswald Spengler, some commentators talk of the Fall of the West.

Hence proposals for the new,
“postmodern” paradigms of the third millennium have been discussed
everywhere in recent years at conferences and symposia (not least in New Age circles). For example,
rather than trying to explain nature through linear-causal models, as in
Newtonian physics, one can consider holistic, synchronic, synergetic,
ecological, cybernetic, or micro/macrocosmic structures.

Such new models revolutionize
perception and thought and are easier to name than to put into socially
integrated practice. For a paradigm shapes reality as such to conform with its foundations, it
“objectifies” it, so to speak, in its image; in other words (albeit only
after it has been culturally accepted) it creates the “objective world of
appearances “, that is, people perceive reality
through the paradigmatic filter of their own culture. A paradigm shift is
thus experienced by the traditional elements of a society as a kind of loss
of reality.

For this reason, as the foundations of
a culture paradigms are not so easily shaken. In order to abandon the
“outdated” Newtonian world view of classical physics, for example, the
reality-generating bases of its thinking (above all the causal principle)
would have to be relativized. But this — as Kuhn has convincingly argued —
does not necessarily require that the new (postmodern, post-Newtonian)
paradigm deliver an updated and more convincing scientific proof or a rational explanation, rather, it is
sufficient for the new world view to appear
better in total than the old one. To put it bluntly, this means that it is
the most powerful and not
necessarily the most reasonable paradigm
that after its cultural establishment becomes the best and is thus accepted as the basis of a new culture.

Hence every paradigm change is always
preceded by a deadly power struggle between various world views. Deadly
because once established, the victorious paradigm completely disables its
opponents, i.e., denies them any paradigmatic (or reality-explaining)
significance. Ptolemy’s cosmological paradigm ("the sun rotates around
the earth”) no longer has, after Copernicus ("the earth orbits the
sun”), any reality-generating meaning. Thus, in the Copernican era the
Ptolemaic views are at best considered to still be imaginary truths but are
no longer capable of explaining reality.
To take another example — for a Tibetan lama, what a positivist scientist
refers to as reality is purely illusory (samsara), whilst the other way around, the religious world of
the lama is a fantastic, if not outright pathological illusion for the
scientist.

The crisis of western modernity (the
rational age) and the occidental discussions about a paradigm shift
primarily have nothing to do with Buddhism, they are a cultural event that
arose at the beginning of the twentieth century in scientific circles in
Europe and North America and a result of the critical self-reflection of
western science itself. It was primarily prominent representatives from
nuclear physics who were involved in this process. (We shall return to this
point shortly.) Atavistic religious systems with their questionable wisdoms
are now pouring into the “empty” and “paradigmless” space created by the
self-doubt and the “loss of meaning “ of the modern western age, so as to
offer themselves as new paradigms and prevail. In recent decades they have
been offering their dogmas (which were abandoned during the Enlightenment
or “age of reason”) with an unprecedented carefree freshness and freedom,
albeit often in a new, contemporary packaging.

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama is just one
of many (coming from the East) who present themselves and their spiritual
meaning to the West as its savior in great need, but he is particularly
adroit at this. Of course, neither the sexual magic doctrines of the Kalachakra Tantra nor the military
ideology of the Shambhala myth
are to be found in his public teachings
(about the new paradigm), just the epistemological discourse of the two
most important Buddhist philosophical schools (Madhyamika and Yogachara)
and the compassionate, touching ethic of Mahayana Buddhism.

One must, however, admit without
reservation that the Buddhist epistemological doctrine makes its entry into
the western paradigm discussion especially easy. No matter which school,
they all assume that an object is only manifest with the perception of the object.
Objectivity (reality) and
subjective perception are thus inseparable, they are in the final instance
identical. This radical subjectivism necessarily leads to the philosophical
premise that all appearances in the exterior world have no “inherent
existence” but are either produced by an awareness (in the Yogachara school) or have to be
described as “empty” (as in the Madhyamika
school).

We are dealing here with two
epistemological schools of opinion which are also not unknown in the West.
The Buddhist Madhyamika
philosophy, which assumes the “emptiness” (shunyata) of all being, could thus win for itself a substantial
voice in the Euro-American philosophical debate. For example, the thesis of
the modern logician, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), that all talk of
“God” and the “emptiness” is nothing more than “word play”, has been
compared with the radical statement of the Madhyamika scholar, Nagarjuna (2nd to 3rd
century), that intellectual discourse is a “word play in diversity” (Brück
and Lai, 1997, p. 443). [6]

Further, the Yogachara school ("everything is awareness”) is presented
as a Buddhist witness for the “quantum theory” of Werner Heisenberg
(1901-1976). The German nuclear physicist introduced the dependence of
“objective” physical processes upon the status of an (observing) subject
into the scientific epistemological debate. Depending upon the experimental
arrangement, for example, the same physical process can be seen as the
movement of non-material waves or as the motion of subatomic particles (uncertainty principle). Occult
schools of all manner of orientations welcomed Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as a
confirmation of their proposed spiritualization (subjectification) of all
being and celebrated his observations as a “scientific” confirmation of
their “just spirit” theories. ("Reality is dependent on the observing
subject”).

Even the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama speaks nonchalantly
about Heisenberg’s theory and the subjectivity of atomic worlds: „Thus
certain phenomena in physics”, we hear from the man himself, „are sometimes
described as electromagnetic waves and on other occasions as particles. The
description of the phenomenon thus seems to be very dependent upon the describer.
Thus, in science we also find this concrete relationship to spirit, to the
observing spirit which attempts to describe the phenomenon. Buddhism is
very rich regarding the description of the spirit ... „ (Dalai Lama XIV,
1995, p. 52).

Surprisingly,
such epistemological statements by the Kundun,
which have in the meantime been taken up by every esoteric, are taken
seriously in scientific circles. Even eminent authorities in their subject
like the German particle physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker who was one of the leading theoretical
founding fathers of the atomic bomb are enthusiastic about the
self-assurance with which the god-king from Tibet chats about topics in
quantum theory, and come to a far-reaching conclusion: „I [von Weizsäcker]
therefore believe that modern physics is in fact compatible with Buddhism,
to a higher degree than one may have earlier imagined” (Dalai Lama XIV,
1995, 11).

On the other
hand, in a charming return gesture the Kundun
describes himself as the „pupil of Professor von Weizsäcker. ... I myself
regard ... him as my teacher, my guru” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1995, p. 13), and
at another point adds, “The
fact is that the concepts of atoms and elementary particles is nothing new
for Buddhism. Since the earliest times our texts speak of these and mention
even more subtle particles. ... After numerous conversations with various
researchers I have realized that there is an almost total correspondence
between that which I from a Buddhist standpoint refer to as the subtle
insubstantiality of material phenomena, and that which the physicists
express in terms of constant flux and levels of fluctuation” (Levenson,
1992, pp. 246-247). In the cosmogony of the Kalachakra Tantra there is talk of “space particles” that contain
the core of a new world after the destruction of a universe. One could see
a parallel to the atomic structure of matter here.

It is somewhat bold of the Dalai Lama
to describe a passage from the Kalachakra
Tantra, where one can read that after the fiery downfall of the
Buddhist universe “galactic seeds” remain, as an anticipation of western
nuclear science. This would imply that centuries ago Buddhism had
formulated what is now said by the elite of western science. The atomic
theory of the Greek philosopher Democritus (around 460–370 B.C.E.), who
lived 1500 years before the Kalachakra
Tantra was written, has much more right to this status. At any rate
such retrospective statements by the Kundun
have the job of presenting his own (Buddhist) system as earlier, superior
and more comprehensive than western culture. They are made with the
power-political intention of anchoring the atavistic Kalachakra doctrine (the textbook for his tantric conquest of
the world) as the paradigm for the new millennium.

The issue with such outwardly harmless
conclusions by the Kundun
("The Kalachakra Tantra
already knew about particle physics”) is that they are thus part of a
sublime power strategy on a spiritual level, not necessarily whether or not
they are true. (We recall once more Kuhn’s thesis that a paradigm need not
be rationally proven, but rather solely that it must have the power to
prevail over its opponents).

And the Dalai Lama has success with his
statements! It surprises ones afresh every time with what self-assurance he
and his lamas intervene in the current crisis in western thought with their
epistemological models and ethical (Mahayana)
principles and know how to sell all this as originality. In this way the
great Tibetan scholars of past centuries are evaluated by the Dalai Lama’s
American “mouthpiece”, Robert Thurman, as more important and wide-reaching
than their European “colleagues”. They were “Hero Scientists: they have
been the quintessential scientists of that non materialistic civilization
[of Tibet]" (quoted by Lopez, 1998, p. 81). As “psychonauts”, in
contrast to the western “astronauts”, they conquered inner space (quoted by
Lopez, 1998, p. 81). But the “guiding lights” of modern European philosophy
like Hume and Kant, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Hegel and Heidegger —
Thurman goes on to speculate — will prove in a later age to have been the
line holders and emanations of the Bodhisattva of science, Manjushri (Lopez
1998, p. 264). Ex oriente lux is
now also true for the science of the occident.

In this, it is all too often overlooked
from a western side that alongside the dominant materialist and mechanistic
world view (of Newton and Descartes) there is an accompanying and unbroken metaphysical tradition in Europe
which has been constantly further developed, as in German Idealism with all
its variations. The classic European
question of whether our world consists of mind and subjectivity rather than
of matter and extended bodies has today been skillfully linked by
Eastern-oriented philosophers to the question of whether the world conforms
to the Buddhist epistemological paradigm or not.

The paradigmatic power struggle of the
lamas is not visible from the outside but is rather disguised as
interdisciplinary dialog, as in the annual “Mind and Life” symposia, in
which the Dalai Lama participates with well-known western scientists. But
is this really a matter of, as is constantly claimed, a “fruitful
conversation” between Buddhism and contemporary science? Can Tibetan
culture really, as is claimed in the Tibetan
Review, offer answers to the questions of “western epistemologists,
neurologists, physicists, psychoanalysts and other scientists”? (Tibetan Review, August 1990, p. 10).

We are prepared to undeservedly claim
that a “rational” and “honest” discourse between the two cultures does not
nor ever has taken place, since in such encounters the magic, the sexual
magic practices, the mythology (of the gods), the history, the cosmology,
and the political “theology” of Buddhist Tantrism remain completely omitted
as topics. But together they all constitute the reality of Tibetan culture,
far more than the epistemological theories of Yogachara or the Madhyamika
philosophy, or the constant professions of love of Mahayana Buddhism do. That which awaits humanity if it were to
adopt the paradigm of Vajrayana,
would be the gods and demons of the Tibetan pantheon and eschatology and
cosmogony laid out in the Kalachakra
Tantra and the Shambhala myth.

Buddhist cosmogony and the postmodern world view

In every paradigmatic conflict, the
determination of a cosmogony has pride of place. What does our world look
like, is it round or quadratic, a disc or a sphere, a center or part of the
periphery, is it the result of a big bang or the seven-day work of a demiurge?
The Orientalist John Wanterbury from Princeton fears for example that
Islamic fundamentalism could lead to a “new age of flat earthism”. By “flatearthism”
he means that the people from the Moslem cultures will start to believe again
that the Earth is a disc (as the Koran
teaches) and that every dissident opinion will be condemned as heresy.
Should the Kalachakra Tantra and
the Buddhist cosmology of Abhidharma
associated with it become firmly paradigmatically established, we face
something similar: a universe with Mount Meru in the middle, surrounded by
the twelve continents and the planets orbiting it.

Such a model of the world contradicts
the scientific discoveries of the West far more than the Ptolemaic system
supplanted by Nicholas Copernicus, in which the sun circles the Earth. But
how does His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama react to the
incompatibility of the two world systems (the Buddhist and the western
one)? He appears in this case to be prepared to make a revision of the
tantric cosmology. Also with the justification that everything arises from
the emptiness, we may read that „I feel that it is totally compatible with
the basic attitude of Buddhism to refute the literal interpretation of Abhidharma
that says the earth is flat, because it is incompatible with the direct
experience of the world as being round.” (Hayward, 1992, p. 37)

This statement is, however, in stark
contradiction to the doctrine of the Kalachakra
Tantra, the entire cosmogonic design of which is aligned with the Abhidharma model. Yet more — since
the microcosmic bodily structure of the tantra master simulates the
macrocosmic world with Mount Meru at its center and the surrounding
continents and oceans, a change in the tantric cosmology means that the
mystic body of the Dalai Lama (as the supreme Kalachakra master) must also be transformed. This is simply
inconceivable, since our modern cosmology rejects any anthropomorphic form
of outer space! Also, with a fundamental rejection of the Abhidharma, the whole Kalachakra system would lose its
sense as the synchronic connection between the yogi’s body and the cosmic
events of Buddhist “evolution”. Consequently, up until now all the schools
of Tibetan Buddhism have stuck strictly to the traditional cosmogony (and
its correspondence in the mystic body). Besides the sand mandala of the Time Tantra (which also represents the
Buddhist universe) Tibetan monks far more frequently construct the
so-called Meru mandala. This, as
its name suggests, is a likeness of the Buddhist cosmos in miniature with
the world mountain Meru as its central axis.

When the Dalai Lama, who institutes no
fundamental changes in the ritual system of Tantric Buddhism, says in
public that the cosmology of the Abhidharma
is in need of revision, then this definitely does not seem to be intended
sincerely. More likely one must be prepared for his radical subjectivist
epistemology ("everything is awareness, everything arises from
emptiness”) to suspend the natural scientific world as illusion (samsara) at any moment and replace
it with the fantastic model of the world from the Abhidharma which it is capable of making appear sensible and
“rational”. From a tantric point of view, cosmogonies do not possess any
objectivity of their own, rather they are ultimately the result of
subjective conceptions; this is of course also true of the Copernican
system. Kalu Rinpoche, the Kagyu master of the Kalachakra Tantra whom we have already often cited , has
clearly expressed this dependency of space upon an appropriate awareness in
the following words: “Each of these cosmologies is perfect for the being
whose karmic projections lead them to experience their universe in this
way. There is a certain relativity in the way in which one experiences the
world. ... Hence, on a relative level every cosmology is valid. At an
ultimate level, no cosmology is absolutely true. It cannot be universally
valid as long as there are beings in fundamentally differing situations”
(Brauen, 1992, p. 109). But that also means that the cosmology of the Abhidharma would become obligatory
for all should the world be converted to Buddhism after the final Shambhala battle as the Kalachakra Tantra predicts.

The Fourteenth
Dalai Lama is especially interested in the phenomenon of artificial
intelligence. Since the mind is independent of the body in the Buddhist
teachings, a pattern of spiritual synapses so to speak, he is of the
opinion that it is possible for it to be reborn not just in people but also
in machines: „I can’t totally rule out the possibility that,” the god-king
says, „that all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a
stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer. […] There is
a possibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life
[with computers], than the next life [he would be reborn in a computer],
same process! [laughter] Then this machine which is half-human and
half-machine has been reincarnated.” (Hayward, 1992, p. 152) (Hayward,
1992, p. 152). In answer to a subsequent question by Eleanor Rosch, a
well-known cognitive psychologist from California, as to whether a great
yogi who stood before the best computer in the world would be able to
project his subtle consciousness into it, His Holiness replied
enigmatically: „I feel this question about computers will be resolved only
by time. We just have to wait and see until it actually happens.” (Hayward,
1992, p. 153).

His Holiness casually grounds the
possibility of taking the computer as a model for the spirit through a
reference to an ancient magical practice of Tibetan Buddhism. This is known
as Trongjug and involves a yogi
transplanting his consciousness into a “freshly” deceased cadaver and then
using this reanimated corpse for his own purposes (Evans-Wentz, 1937, p.
184). „In this case”, His Holiness says, „there is a total change of the
body. [...] It’s very mystical, but imagine a person, a Tantric
practitionerwho actually transfers
his consciousness to a fresh corpse. His previous body is dead; it has left
and is finished. Now he has entered the new body. So in this case, you see,
he has a completely new body but it’s the same life, the same person”
(Hayward, 1992, p. 155). Images
of this kind can be translated into computer terms without father ado: The
“fresh corpse” forms the hardware
so to speak, which stores the awareness of the Tantric who uses the dead
body for his own ends as software.

In addition, such Tantric Buddhist
speculations can lead one to perceive a subjectivity independent of humans
in the “Internet” and “cyberspace”, a kind of superconscious. Could not the
spirit of the supreme Kalachakra
master, independent of a human body, one day control the international
network of all computers from the inside? As fantastic and uncanny as it
may sound, it is at any rate a theoretical
possibility within the tantric system that such a question be answered
with a yes. For this reason it is also taken seriously in exile Tibetan
lama circles, by the Namgyal institute for example. The Namgyal monks are
essentially commissioned to conduct the Kalachakra
Tantra and are under the direct authority of the Dalai Lama. This
institution can also be described as a kind of Tantric Buddhist “elite
university”.

On February 8, 1996, His Holiness’s
tantra institute posted a “Curriculum on Cyberspace” online. This document
is of interest in as far as it is about the occult relationship between
Tantrism, especially the Kalachakra
Tantra, and the Internet. We would therefore like to cite several
lengthier passages from it: “Cyberspace is a dimension of space sustained
by networked computers designed to extend the power of the mind.
Remarkably, the Internet often appears almost mystically to have a life of
its own that is more than the sum of its parts. Mental projections can of
course yield both positive and negative uses and results. Tibetan Buddhism,
known for its mastery of the mind, has an area of concentration called
‘tantra’ that specializes in bringing spiritual motivation to the realm of
mental projections …” (Namgyal, HPI 012). From this, the authors continue,
follows the need to have a Buddhist influence upon the net, to bless it and
purify it.

The document continues as follows: the
monks of the Namgyal Institute, “the personal monastery of the Dalai Lama,
[were asked] to discuss whether the blessing of cyberspace would be
possible. They enthusiastically responded, noting that one tantric system
in particular, the Kalachakra Tantra,
… would be highly appropriate as a blessing vehicle because it especially
emphasizes space … Coincidentally, the Kalachakra
is also the most widely disseminated of the Tibetan Buddhist tantric
systems…” (Namgyal, HPI 012). Cyberspace, we also learn, could be used as
the vehicle for a tantric projection (i.e., of the Kalachakra Tantra).

Thus the Namgyal Institute conducted
the first Kalachakra cyberspace
blessing with a ritual on February 8, 1996: “The actual ceremony took about 30
minutes and consisted of the monks chanting blessing prayers from the Kalachakra Tantra while envisioning
space as cyberspace, the networked realm of computers, in their
imagination. An image of the Kalachakra
mandala, actually a scanned photo of a sand painting made earlier by
the monks, was present on a computer as a visual aid … Future cyberspace
blessings will likely be offered at other auspicious times …” (Namgyal, HPI
012). It should be obvious that the monks’ prayers contained the constantly
recited Mahayana wish to help all
living beings. The vision of a global Buddhocracy discussed in the Kalachakra Tantra, however, is not
openly mentioned. [7]

There is something both fascinating and
frightening about Buddhist theoreticians and even the Dalai Lama depicting Tantrism
as the potential awareness of a world-spanning megacomputer. In this an
identity of the ADI BUDDHA as a global superbrain is implicit. Does it
perhaps have something to do with this Buddhist vision that His Holiness
the Fourteenth Dalai Lama made himself available for an advertisement by
the computer manufacturer, Apple? (Spiegel,
16/1998). [8]

In reading the literature about the
structures of consciousness and their relation to computer technology, it
is notable that “tantra” and “net” are frequently compared with one
another, not just because the Sanskrit word “tantra” can be translated as
“something woven” or “network”, but because the two systems are somehow
presumed to be fundamentally related. Surprisingly even such a complex
thinker as the astrophysicist and systems theorist Erich Jantsch –probably
out of ignorance of the matter — has (in the late seventies) equated the
principle of “cybernetic leaning processes” with Tantrism (Jantsch, 1982,
p. 324).

In October 1987, a small group of
well-known Western scientists headed by Francisco Varela traveled to
Dharamsala to take part in a several-day seminar on neurobiology, cognitive
psychology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary theory with the Dalai
Lama. There were daily meetings with an expert paper and subsequent
discussion. The intention behind the whole event was however ultimately
directed at just one question — how could the latest discoveries in the
most advanced branches of scientific research be derived from Buddhism?
After every expert paper one heard, yes, Buddhism already says that too!
Admittedly, His Holiness spoke emotionally about a “combination of Western
science and Eastern spiritual development”, but at heart it was not about
cooperation, but rather the consolidation of the Buddhist paradigm
described about. In the meantime such meetings between His Holiness and
Western scientists have become institutionalized by Dharamsala and take
place annually “Mind and Life”).

Many researchers from the West, starved
of mystic experiences for decades, have finally found their spiritual
master in the “living Buddha” from Dharamsala. They have become converts to
Buddhism like Francisco Varela or the nuclear physicist David Bohm, or,
like Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, they fall into a kind of private
ecstasy when confronted with the Kundun.
Although His Holiness’s “scientific” interventions remain very general and
abstract and in fact repeatedly boil down to just a handful of
epistemological statements, he is nonetheless treated as a “colleague” by a
number of scientists, behind whom the omniscience of a yogi shines forth. „Well, as has
often been the case in this conference,”
Francisco Varela enthuses for example, „Your Holiness, seem to
anticipate the scientists’ questions” (Hayward, 1992, p. 230).

Whoever it is who can formulate and
consolidate the “scientific” paradigms of an era in human history actually
ought to be regarded as the “spiritual ruler” of the era; he represents the
force which determines the awareness, the feelings and the thoughts of
millions for centuries. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Marx,
Freud, and Einstein were such “spiritual giants”. The Fourteenth Dalai
Lama, a brilliant master of the workings of consciousness, knows full well
about this historical force and the power-political significance of the
paradigmatic conflict. Likewise, he knows that a “Buddhization” of western
science would make him especially powerful in contrast to other religious
orientations. The Buddhist epistemological theories furnish the ideal
conditions for such a process of appropriation. Both the Yogachara school ("everything
is awareness”) and the Madhyamika
school ("everything arises from emptiness”) permit (at least in
theory) a relativization of the scientific culture of the West and its
replacement with the world view of the Kalachakra
Tantra.

As subtly, philosophically, and
rationally as the tantric world view is discussed among the Western
scientific elite, the more spectacular, emotional, and mythical is the
spread of Tantric Buddhism among the masses. The Kundun has in the last five years succeeded in engaging the
greatest propaganda machine in the world, the Hollywood film industry, for
himself and his cause.

Hollywood and Tantric Buddhism

The exotic flair projected by the
Tibetan god-king and his lamas with their mysterious doctrine and adventurous
history has led to a situation in which Tibet and its religion have
increasingly become the stuff celluloid dreams are made of. First of all,
the Italian film director, Bernardo Bertolucci, created a somewhat
saccharine but highly regarded monument to the religious founder with his
work, Little Buddha. The film
provided great propaganda value for Tibetan Buddhism because it told the
story of the reincarnation of a lama in an American boy and an Indian girl
and thus paved the way for the spread of the doctrine in the West.

While we were writing this book two
major films about His Holiness appeared. One of them, Martin Scorsese’s Kundun, features the life story of
the god-king from his discovery as a boy up until his flight from Tibet (in
1959), the other, Seven Years in
Tibet, directed by Jean Jacques Arnaud, is about the adventures of the
Austrian mentor of the Dalai Lama and SS member, Heinrich Harrer, with Brad
Pitt in the lead role. “Tibet is the flavor of the season! ... In recent
months around two million Germans have wanted to see the teenage idol Brad
Pitt as the Austrian adventurer and Lama friend, Heinrich Harrer” the Spiegel enthused without once
mentioning Harrer’s SS past (Spiegel,
16/1998, p. 110).

Whilst filming, Brad Pitt experienced
something like a mystic shiver: “And then they shot this scene where they
are saying: 'Give the Dalai Lama the power!' Everybody goes into this
chant, and it was like something was going down and God was shining through
the clouds. It was heavy” (Newsweek, May 19, 1997, p. 25).

The Italo-American Scorsese was with
irresistable, ambiguous humor accepted as a monk by His Holiness. After the
filmmaker had visited him in Dharamsala at the end of an exhausting
journey, the Kundun bantered
that, “Martin seemed at once far calmer. No longer like a hectic New
Yorker, but like a Tibetan monk” (Playboy
[German edition], March 1998, p. 40).

Scorsese himself is completely
convinced that his film, Kundun,
has a magic effect on its audience. “Kundun is reminiscent of a filmic
prayer — as if you wanted to show what is invisible to the eye:
spirituality. Can this succeed in the cinema?”, asks the in spiritual
matters otherwise extremely skeptical, even cynical German weekly magazine,
Spiegel. “Absolutely”, answered
Scorsese, “If you put movements, rhythms, music, faces together in a
particular way, then something like a spiritual
current can arise from the totality of images” (Spiegel 12/1998, p. 261) This director has made a ritual film, which
in his opinion can silently influence people’s awareness (as Tibetan
Buddhism would have it): “These rituals which I show in Kundun, for example, I don’t need to
explain. They are something wonderful and universal” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 14-15, 1998, p. 19).

However, in the USA the film was well
received by neither the general public nor the critics. “The devastating
reaction of the American mainstream press made me sick”, the director said
at the presentation of his missionary work in Munich. (Münchner Abendzeitung, March 19). In total contrast to their
American colleagues, numerous German film critics let themselves be
completely uncritically drawn into the “spiritual current” of the Kundun. The Bild newspaper, for example, raved: “He recounts his tale
almost wordlessly, in magic images. And slowly. So slowly that one soon
surrenders to the pull of the images, forgets the passing of time and
savors every moment” (Bild, March
19, 1998, p. 6). The Münchener
Abendzeitung had this to say: “Scorsese’s film is hypnotic and lucid” (Münchner
Abendzeitung, March 19). Even the “sober” German news magazine, Spiegel, had no reservations about
letting itself be enchanted and spoke enthusiastically of the “impressive
images” with which Scorsese created “the portrait of an exceptional person
and a mystic dreamland [of] Shangri La — demanding, strongly emotional
cinema” (Spiegel, 16/1998, p.
110). German political and artistic celebrities were out in force at the
lavish premiere of the film in Munich.

Scorsese’s film, the screenplay of
which was edited by the Dalai Lama himself, is a work of exile Tibetan
propaganda which falsifies or distorts recent Tibetan history in numerous
scenes. There is no word of the CIA’s assistance in the flight of the Kundun; that his father was poisoned
by political factions, that the former regent Reting Rinpoche was brutally
strangled in the Potala, that at the time at least 200 monks from the
Drepung monastery who wanted to free Reting Rinpoche from prison were
killed by the machineguns of the Tibetan army — all these incidents either
remained unmentioned or were falsely depicted. Mao Zedong appears as a
decadent giant with the aura of a noble-born casino owner. Even in his own
autobiography the Kundun writes
that he much admired Mao, but in the film he encounters the “Great
Chairman” with the constant, almost mistrustful attentiveness of a young,
albeit still somewhat inexperienced, spiritual master.

Five further film about the Land of Snows were scheduled to
appear in 1998/99: about the CIA in Tibet, the terrible yeti in Tibet, the
terror in Tibet, a romantic love story in Tibet, the shattered dreams of
youth in Tibet. IMAX, a company which produces gigantic 3D movies, has
commissioned a film in which a Tibetan mountain-climber under dramatic
circumstances unfurls the national flag of the Land of Snows at the highest
point in the world (on Mount Everest). (We may recall that Mount Everest is
worshipped by the populace as a goddess.) In addition to these feature
films there are numerous documentaries, among others one about the
“Bu-Jews”, or Jewish people who have decided to follow the Buddhist
religious path. Denise Di Novi, whose production company has also conducted
a “Tibet project” under the title of Buddha
of Brooklyn, informs us that “The tale of the Dalai Lama and the
struggle of the Tibetan people is the kind of story that captures the
imagination of Hollywood” (Newsweek,
May 19, 1997, p. 24). Tibet film scripts are piling up in the editorial
offices of the big film companies. “It's as though everybody who carries a
camera wants to make a movie on Tibet”, Tenzing Chodak, director of the Tibet Fund, has commented (Newsweek, May 19, 1997, p. 24).

Undoubtedly the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
has gained an particularly notable victory in his entry into the Hollywood
scene. “Tibet is looming larger than ever on the show business map”, we
could read in the Herald Tribune
(Herald Tribune, March 20, 1997,
p. 1). In August 1996 ,Harrison Ford, Sharon Stone, Steven Segal, Shirley
MacLaine, and other superstars queued to shake hands with the “living
Buddha” in Los Angeles. Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin called upon
President Bill Clinton to rebuke China for its human right abuses in Tibet.
“Tibet is going to enter Western popular culture as something can only when
Hollywood does the entertainment injection into the world system”, writes
the journalist Orville Shell, “Let's remember that Hollywood is the most
powerful force in the world, besides the U.S. military” (Herald Tribune, March 20, 1997, p.
6). In 1993, 88 of the 100 most-viewed films were made in the USA. Orville
Schell, who is working on a book about “Tibet and the West”, sees the Kundun’s Hollywood connection as a
substitute for the absent diplomatic corps who would be able to represent
the interests of the Dalai Lama internationally: “Since he doesn't have
embassies, and he has no political power, he has to seek other kinds.
Hollywood is a kind of country in his own, and he's established a kind of
embassy there” (Newsweek, May 19,
1997, p. 24).

Orville Schell: “Undeniable, there was something of a craze
brewing around Tibet. Like a radioactive core emitting uncontainable
energy, Hollywood’s sudden interest was helping to fuel what some observers
started to call a Tibet phenomen.
Indeed, as the buzz about the film productions increased, media outlets of
all kinds soon gravitated to the story, so that everywhere one looked the
subject of Tibet had a way of popping up.” (Schell, 2000, p. 34)

The god-king primarily owes it to the
actor Richard Gere that he has become a star for America’s famous actors.
“For the Tibetan people, Richard Gere, Hollywood, and the films are an
absolute stroke of luck!”, His Holiness explained in the German edition of Playboy (Playboy [German edition], March 1998, p. 38). Gere himself was
initiated into the Kalachakra Tantra by
the Kundun; we do not know to
what level. He has spoken very openly about his initiation experiences in
the journal Tricycle and also
made reference there to the magic power of Tantrism, which drove him to the
limits of his own existence (Tricycle
5 (3), p. 54). There is already a poem in which Gere is revered like a
Tibetan deity: “The huge head of Richard Gere,” it says in this poem, “ a
tsonga blossom in his hair, / comes floating like a Macy's Parade balloon /
above the snowdapped summit of sacred Kailash” (Time, vol. 150 no. 15: October 13, 1997). The Dalai Lama, who
is fully aware of the great significance of show business, has selected the
Hollywood star as his personal pupil and treats him, the actor says, with
fatherly severity.

His Holiness does not even shrink from using the world of fashion
„to bring Tibet and Buddhism to the notice of the international jet” (Tibet Review, January 1993, p. 7). “Blatant materialism is passé, Lamaism en vogue!”, the Spiegel tells us (Spiegel
16/1998, p. 109). In January 1993 the Kundun
was responsible for an issue of the fashion magazine Vogue as Exceptional
Editor in Chief. Fashion designers like Anna Sui, Todd Oldham, and Marc
Jacobs sell outfits for “ freedom in Tibet”. As a “celebrity cook” the
god-king recommends “a likely hit recipe for dumplings” (Spiegel, special issue, 4/1998, p.
133).

An interview with the Kundun that appeared in the March
(1998) issue of the German edition of Playboy
is a highpoint in his “public relations”. The up-market sex magazine
presents His Holiness in the introduction bombastically: “He is goodly,
wise, and peaceloving — and is conquering the world [!]: The victory
procession of the Dalai Lama leaves even the Pope pale with envy. The
Tibetan leader is worshipped like a god in Hollywood at the moment. Now in Playboy he talks more openly than
ever. About Buddhism, China, sex, and alcohol” (Playboy [German edition], March 1998, p. 38). Even if a light
ironic note is not to be overheard in this presentation, the statement is
nonetheless unambiguous: The Dalai Lama is conquering the world (!) and is
worshipped like a god in Hollywood, the mightiest center of the industry of
the mind.

This Playboy interview has a further symbolic value, especially when
we adopt the tantric/magic viewpoint that everything is interconnected. In
this light there must be a reason why the pious statements and the photos
of His Holiness are printed in the sex magazine together with numerous
images of naked women and amid erotic and in places obscene texts. It
immediately rouses up the image of a ganachakra
with the central guru conducting his sexual magic rites surrounded by his karma mudras (wisdom consorts or Playgirls). When Playboy asks the supreme Tibetan
tantra master, “Are you actually interested in the topic of sex?”, the Kalachakra master, initiated into
all the secrets of sexual magic, replies, “My goodness! You ask a
62-year-old monk who has been celibate his entire life a thing like that. (laughs out loud) I don’t have much
to say about sex...” (Playboy [German
edition], March 1998, p. 46).

With equal euphoria and enthusiasm the
German news magazine, Spiegel,
devoted a cover story to the Kundun
in April 1998. The front cover featured the head of a Buddha into which
masses of Westerners were pouring. Was this the head of the Kundun, the
incarnation of Avalokiteshvara
and the time god Kalachakra? The
title story of this issue of Spiegel
is at any rate to a large extent dedicated to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and
Tibetan Buddhism, or rather to what the author (Erich Follath) understands
this to be. It begins — coincidentally or not — on page108, the holiest and
most magical number in Tantric Buddhism. Follath probably asked the Spiegel editors to make the magic
page number the start of his article deliberately, since he is
well-informed about the holy number 108. In a travel report on Bhutan he
mentions the numeral 108, and since this reference occurs in connection
with an event that we have dealt with in detail in our study, we would like
to quote the passage. “... half a dozen more lamas are keeping watch here
in the Himalayan foothills at the place where the king, Songtsen Gampo, had
the first of a total of 108 holy sites constructed in the 7th
century: It was supposed to drive out the terrible devil in the form of a
woman who at that time was up to her mischief all over the roof of the
world, the residence of the gods” (Spiegel,
special issue 4/1998, p. 60). The “terrible devil in the form of a
woman” is no-one other than “Mother Tibet”, the stigmatized Srinmo, over whose body the sacred
landscape of the Land of Snows is raised.

The Dalai Lama’s star is shining
brighter than ever before. Nevertheless, since the Shugden rebellion the god-king’s aura has begun to darken, and
it is an irony of fate that the serious accusations against him have come
from a conservative faction within his own school (the Gelugpas). In
addition, the followers of the recalcitrant protective god (Shugden) do not argue like
“reactionaries” at all in public, but rather (just like the Kundun) appeal to democratic
fundamentals, human rights, and the freedom of opinion. Thus in certain
circles the “greatest prince of peace of our times” has overnight become a
despot, a political traitor, a nepotist, a hypocrite, even a potential
murderer. His accusers do not just abuse him, but rather justify their
claims with “hard” facts that are worth checking but for which the
“official” West has up until now closed its eyes and ears.

In
the ongoing Shugden debate (as of
1998), many previously repressed and unreappraised topics from the history
of Tibet and the Tibetans in exile have been brought to the surface. Among
other things His Holiness and the government in exile have been accused of
constantly defaming Tibetan Opposition figures as Chinese spies (e.g. Dujom
Rinpoche) so as to silence them politically; of undemocratic actions
against 13 Indian branches of Tibetans in exile and the possible murder of
their spokesman, Gungthang Rinpoche; of playing false with the national
guerilla army, which is outwardly combated, but covertly supported and
built up; of the political murder of opposition politicians (Gongtang
Tsultrim); of power-politically motivated jealousy of the Fifteenth
Karmapa, the head of the largest Kagyupa lineage; of nepotism and the
absolute favoritism of members of the Dalai Lama’s family (the “Yabshi
clan”); of misjudging the world political situation, especially in the
years of delay in establishing good contacts with Taiwan; of cooperation
with the Chinese over the enthronement of the new Karmapa; of secret
diplomacy with Beijing in general, through which the country is sold out to
China to the benefit of the Lamaist culture. Intrigues play just as major a
role in Dharamsala ("little Lhasa”) as in the Lhasa of old. The
centuries of struggle between the various sects have also not reached an
end in exile, and the competition between the individual regions of the
Land of Snows just as little. Corruption and sinister money dealings are
everyday events among the Tibetans. Fresh accusations are being made every
day. In particular, as a spokesperson for the government in exile laments,
the Internet is filled with “an unprecedented amount of literature ... that
criticizes the Dalai Lama and belittles the Tibetan Exile Government”
(Burns, Newsgroup 1).

Footnotes:

[1] The inspiration
for “engaged Buddhism” come not from the Dalai Lama but rather from Thich
Nhat Hanh, a Theravada monk born in central Vietnam in 1926. The causes of
ignorance, egocentrism, violence, war, and environmental degradation were
supposed to be overcome through meditation, social commitment and the
practice of community with Christian groups all over the world.

[2] This was in the
period where the Communist Party (the SED) had already lost control over
the country.

[3] Pope John Paul II
is also more reserved than progressive on the ecumenical front, despite the
spectacular major event with representatives from all religions that took
place at his invitation in Assisi on October 25, 1986 and at which the Kundun was also present. Almost ten
years after this meeting, upon which many followers of the ecumenical
movement had set great hopes, the Pope describes the teaching of Buddha
Shakyamuni in his book Crossing the
Threshold of Hope as atheistic, negative, and unworldly and states that
the “doctrines of salvation in Buddhism and Christianity are opposed” (Tibetan Review, June 1995, p. 12).

[4] It will never
come to this, since the Muslims are just as well-versed and sensitive as
His Holiness in matters concerning occultism and “world domination”.

[5] Members of the
RSS were closely involved in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, of whom
the Dalai Lama claims he was his greatest non-Buddhist teacher.

[6] With his shunyata doctrine, Nagarjuna, the
founding father of Madhyamika,
even gained admittance into the discourse of Christian theology, through
Abe Masao’s concept of a “self-emptying, self-denying God”, for instance.
(Brück and Lai, 1997, p. 448).

[7] As an aside, it
must be noted, however, that the blessing of the Internet by the Kalachakra monks has not had the
positive effect they intended. In thousands of the contributions that have
been transmitted over the net since 1996 the Dalai Lama has for the first
time been subject to strong criticism and attack.

[8] Apple ran a
campaign under the slogan Think
Different that featured living and past celebrities — including
(alongside Pablo Picasso, Mohammed Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Alfred Hitchcock,
etc.) the Dalai Lama. Since the god-king’s likeness drew criticism in Asian
countries, Apple withdrew the ad. This in its turn led to a spirited
discussion on the Internet.

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